OGC Press Releases

November 10, 2011 – The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announced that it will hold its next OGC Technical Committee and Planning Committee meetings (http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/1111tc) from 28 November - 2 December 2011 at Eurocontrol headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. The meeting is being hosted by Eurocontrol and sponsored by Comsoft, Luciad, and Snowflake Software.

"Eurocontrol, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, is honoured to host the event and we look forward to an even closer coordination with OGC to serve existing and forthcoming aviation information management needs," said Paul Bosman, Manager System Wide Information Management / Enterprise Architecture, Eurocontrol.

The OGC's open standards are widely used to enable communication of digital geographic and location information. The OGC is a consensus-based and member-driven organisation whose members are companies, government ministries and offices, non-governmental organizations, research organisations and universities. Membership in the OGC is growing faster in Europe than in any other region. 202 of the OGC's current 438 members are European.

The public is invited to attend an "Interoperability Day" and special workshops on INSPIRE, the Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE), and the Internet of Things. An OGC Nordic Forum will be officially established at the Brussels meeting. The Augmented Reality Markup Language (ARML) 2.0 Standards Working Group will hold its first face to face meeting since it was chartered in September.

Many emerging ICT markets and technologies involve location and sensors, and the value of investments in these areas ultimately depends on a supportive standards infrastructure. The special "Internet of Things" workshop will explore the role of OGC in the broader development of the emerging Internet of Things. The workshop will include IoT presentations by several organizations and discussion of how the IoT will make use of OGC standards for location, sensor webs, 3D spatial models and location-enabled mobile services.

During the meetings, there will be a very full agenda, including presentations and discussions in many of the OGC Domain Working Groups (http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/wg). The OGC facilitates more than 50 working groups made up of domain experts from across the world. These working groups provide a forum for discussion of key business and technical issues relating to geospatial information integration and interoperability.

The OGC encourages interested parties to consider attending OGC meetings. Non-members may attend as guests with approval by the OGC. A limited number of discounted registrations will be provided on a first come basis. The OGC invites inquiries and participation.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 430 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

7 November 2011. During the well-attended OGC 3D Summit in Boulder, Colorado the first ever OGC 3DIM Award was given to the 3D Pilot NL, a unique network of over 65 private, public and scientific organizations who collaborated to push 3D developments in the Netherlands. The four national organizations who succeeded in establishing this collaboration network are the Kadaster, Geonovum (the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) executive committee in the Netherlands), the Netherlands Geodetic Commission and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment. With this award the 3D Pilot team is recognized for its significant accomplishments in aligning national and international standards for 3D content data sharing. The pilot project established the groundwork for one of the world's most comprehensive national 3D geo-information programs.

The mission of the OGC 3D Information Management (3DIM) Domain Working Group is to facilitate the definition and development of standards for sharing and accessing 3D geo-information. According to members of the Working Group, “The developments in the Netherlands serve as an inspirational example of a national implementation of a 3D standard.”

3D Pilot NL

The objective of the 3D Pilot NL was to accelerate the use of 3D geo-information in the Netherlands. Initiators of the 3D Pilot NL were Kadaster (Dutch national cadastre and mapping agency), Geonovum (the National Spatial Data Infrastructure executive committee in the Netherlands), the Netherlands Geodetic Commission and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment. More than 65 private, public and scientific organizations collaborated on use cases and a test bed to study the establishment of a national standard on 3D geo-information.

Added value of 3D over 2D information

The pilot has demonstrated the added value of 3D geo-information compared to 2D geo-information in various use cases, including interactive airstream simulation, 3D cadastre, mutation detection and integrated planning and management of underground and aboveground municipal assets. Also, 3D information automatically generated from laser point data can serve many application domains. Such information about tree heights and sizes, new buildings, roofs, etc. can easily become part of an OGC CityGML model. Demonstrations of use cases can be found at www.geonovum.nl/dossiers/3dpilot/bibliotheek/presentaties#films (on Youtube).

Standardization

One of the main achievements of the pilot was the establishment of a national 3D standard based on an international standard. The Netherlands' 3D standard integrates the OGC CityGML Encoding Standard with a new version of the existing national Information Model for large scale Geo-information (IMGeo). IMGeo contains object definitions for large scale representations of roads, water, land use/land cover, bridges, tunnels etc. and prescribes 2D point, curve or surface geometry for all objects. As the new version of IMGeo will be completely integrated with CityGML, IMGeo version 2.0 will also facilitate 2.5D and 3D geometries. The close integration between an existing information model for 2D geo-information and CityGML is a major step toward the practical use and re-use of 2D and 3D information.

3D Pilot continues

The next phase of the 3D Pilot NL started in October 2011. This phase focuses on the development of tools and instruments to support the implementation of the 3D standard. This includes generating IMGeo 2.0 example data at various levels of detail; describing standard procedures to generate such data; describing standard procedures to update and maintain the 3D data as part of existing (2D) information processes; and developing a 3D validation tool. In addition, special attention is being paid to aligning standards from the construction domain (Building Information Models) and the spatial data domain, at both national and international levels. Almost 120 participants have subscribed to participate in this next phase (www.geonovum.nl/dossiers/3d-pilot/deelnemersvervolg).

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 430 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

Nov. 4, 2011 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) announce the WhereCon 2012 conference, to be held April 10-12 2012 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. Online registration for WhereCon 2012 is open and seating is limited. Visit www.wherecon.com for more information.

WhereCon is the event for public and private sector decision makers to gather and begin a new dialogue on the synergies that location-enabled and place-based streams of information activity bring to every sphere of our lives. The question of “Where?” is increasingly becoming the organizing principal for how public and private sector enterprises get their jobs done.

"New location technologies are fundamentally changing the way business and government organize and make decisions. At the same time, such technologies and the spatially-enabled data they produce are posing profound and vexing public policy challenges that society must tackle," said Mark Reichardt, president and CEO of the OGC. "We've organized WhereCon so people can hear the stories of public and private sector leaders who are showing us what the place-based future will look like."

USGIF President Keith J. Masback added to that, “The ’power of place’ has never been more evident, and its relevance to the whole of the US government in terms of increased efficiency and effectiveness is unquestioned. The explosive growth in interest in the geospatial dimension of our national security is increasingly shared by decision makers in civilian government and in private sector industry. That is why the USGIF is partnering with the OGC to bring the promise and challenges of place-based decision-making to this larger national and global community. This is a critically important discussion, right now, for the future of the Nation."

For a comprehensive list of topic areas and an up-to-date list of speakers, please visit www.WhereCon.com. You can also keep up to date with the latest news and offers on Twitter via @WhereCon2012, Facebook and LinkedIn. We'll look for you there!

About the Organizers:

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) (www.opengeospatial.org) is an international consortium of more than 430 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled.

The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) (www.usgif.org) is an educational non-profit established to promote the geospatial intelligence tradecraft and to develop a stronger community of interest between government, industry, academia, professional organizations and individuals who share a mission focused on the development and application of geospatial intelligence to address national security objectives.

1 November 2011. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announced the formation of two new OGC Technical Committee Standards Working Groups: the RESTful Service Policy Standard Working Group (REST SWG) and the Web Feature Service – Filter Encoding Standards Working Group (WFS-FE SWG). The OGC invites public review of the SWG charters and will consider comments received before 16 November 2011.

The purpose of the RESTful Service Policy Standard Working Group is to create requirements, recommendations and examples for the creation of OGC standards for RESTful Web Services. The result of this work will be formalized in a Policy Standard for the structure and content of the implementation of geospatial standards embodying a uniform approach to RESTful principles. (REST stands for “Representational State Transfer”, a set of principles and constraints for Web computing which optimize desirable qualities including ease of development, robustness, and scalability. The term "RESTful" connotes adaptation of REST for particular computing situations such as geospatial Web services.)

The OGC members invite comments on the proposed REST SWG charter. See https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=46511 for details about the scope and intent of the proposed RESTful Service Policy Standard Working Group. Comments on the charter should be submitted to requests [at] lists [dot] opengeospatial [dot] org.

The purpose of the OGC Web Services Web Feature Service / Filter Encoding Standard (OWS WFS/FES) Standards Working Group is to address recent change requests regarding the use of the OGC® Filter Encoding Standard (FES) with the OGC Web Services Web Feature Service. The OGC® Filter Encoding Standard (FES) defines an XML encoding for filter expressions. A filter expression logically combines constraints on the properties of a feature in order to identify a particular subset of features to be operated upon. This standard is used by a number of OGC Web Services, including the OGC Web Feature Service Interface Standard, which defines interfaces and operations for data access and manipulation on a set of geographic features.

The OGC members invite comments on the proposed WFS/FE SWG charter. The technical details about the scope and intent of the work to be done are available at https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=46032.) Comments on the charter should be submitted to requests [at] lists [dot] opengeospatial [dot] org.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 430 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

The survey is a joint effort by two academic researchers who are OGC members and by the OGC Business Value Committee. Dr. Mu Xia at Santa Clara University and Dr. Kexin Zhao at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte developed the survey based on requirements from the OGC Business Value Committee to support their studies on standards effectiveness. The OGC Business Value Committee will use a summary of the results to help the OGC better understand the value of the OGC’s open standards and improve its programs for geospatial standards development, compliance testing and outreach.

We encourage everyone involved with geospatial or location data, software and services to complete the survey. This is an opportunity for technical and commercial colleagues to work together and highlight their business needs and requirements around open standards. OGC membership is not a requirement, and you can participate even if the software you use or provide does not implement OGC standards.

The survey takes about 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Individual responses will be seen only by the researchers and OGC staff. The researchers will summarize the data gathered from the survey, removing all references to individual responses, and make the summary available to OGC Business Value Committee members. An executive summary will be provided to survey respondents.

The researchers have prepared two versions of the online survey. To take the survey, if you are a technology user, visit http://uncc.surveyshare.com/s/AQAIJDC. If you are a technology provider (a vendor or a system integrator) or a consultant, visit http://uncc.surveyshare.com/s/AQAIZBC. If you are not sure which version to use, contact us. Please also forward this message to others who might be interested in completing the survey.

The survey period is 1st November through 18th December 2011. Prizes will be awarded at random to three individuals who complete the survey. The first person whose name is drawn after the survey has closed will receive an iPad 2 (16GB, WiFi), the second will receive an iPod Touch (8GB, 4th Generation) and the third will receive a set of Bose AE2 headphones.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 430 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

September 12, 2011 - The OGC announced that a consortium that includes the OGC and OGC members has been accepted as an Associate Partner of the Single European Sky ATM Research programme (SESAR Joint Undertaking). This consortium, called Modeling Support with standards for Information and Architecture models applied to Aviation (MOSIA), is prepared to play a substantial role in the development of the technology architecture for the Single European Sky (SES), a next-generation air traffic control infrastructure in Europe enabling the safe and environmentally friendly development of air transport. In aviation information technology as in other domains, standards are recognized as providing a critical platform for innovation and market development.

The international MOSIA consortium is led by SINTEF and includes other partners: Snowflake, Envitia, Carmenta, IGSI, OGC, NoMagic, M-AIS and the University of Münster. As a member of this team, OGC will help provide important recommendations to help SESAR support a major European Commission goal to transition from a product-centric to a data-centric approach in exchanging air transportation management (ATM) information. The team will advance architectural recommendations based on proven international standards in a cutting edge service-oriented architecture (SOA) and modeling context.

Athina Trakas, Director of European Services at the OGC, said, "As a member of the MOSIA team, and in our capacity as Standards Coordinator for the project, we look forward to working with the team to ensure that recommendations and solutions are compliant and harmonized with OGC and complementary standards. It is also important to be sure that European requirements are addressed in international standards. We will leverage the broad range of formal liaison and partnership agreements the OGC has already established with international standards development organizations, and we will also reach out to other standards organizations whose work is relevant to the MOSIA consortium's goals."

This partnership has been driven by the OGC Aviation Domain Working Group's leadership in organizing rapid prototyping testbeds and pilots aimed at validating and enhancing emerging information exchange standards and web services in the aviation domain. Nadine Alameh, Director Interoperability Programs, provides OGC staff support to the working group.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 430 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, sensors and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

17 October 2011. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) has issued a call for sponsors of the OGC Web Services, Phase 9 (OWS-9) Testbed. The OWS-9 Testbed is run under OGC’s Interoperability Program (IP), designed to rapidly develop, test and deliver proven candidate specifications into OGC’s Specification Program.

OWS-9 builds on the outcomes of prior OGC initiatives, more specifically the OWS-8 testbed, which addressed interoperability architectures, enhancements to existing OGC standards, and other candidate standards in four main areas: Aviation, Observation Fusion, Geosynchronization/Geodata Bulk Transfer, and Cross-Community Interoperability.

OWS-9 will also explore new areas, including but not limited to Compliance Testing, Decision Fusion (including Augmented Reality, Digital Rights Management and Points of Interest), Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) (including Internet of Things concepts), Semantic Mediation in various domains (such as Aviation and Hydrology), and Mass-Market innovations (such as Web Mapping/Tiling innovations, and “app store”-like concepts for geospatial resources).

Participation in this planning meeting does not constitute a commitment to sponsor OWS-9. Sponsor and participant commitment will be part of a subsequent Request for Quotation / Call for Participation (RFQ/CFP) process. OGC also welcomes the participation of other Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs), as that assures cooperation and sharing among the SDOs and convergence of standards employed by OGC members.

OGC testbeds, pilot projects and interoperability experiments are part of OGC's Interoperability Program, a global, hands-on collaborative prototyping program designed to rapidly develop, test and deliver proven candidate specifications into OGC's Specification Program, where they are formalized for public release.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 420 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/.

Wayland, MA, USA, 19 October 2011. At the September meeting of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC(R)) in Boulder, Colorado, Josh Lieberman received the OGC's prestigious 12th annual Kenneth D. Gardels Award (http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/awards). The Gardels Award, a gold medallion, is awarded to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to advance OGC's vision of geospatial information fully integrated into the world's information systems.

Josh Lieberman is a Senior Manager in the Geospatial Analytics team within the Federal Analytic and Forensic Technology group of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP. He first became active in OGC Technical Committee and Interoperability Program activities more than a decade ago and he has been a participant as well as an IP architect in numerous OGC pilot projects, interoperability experiments and testbeds. He has served most recently as an architect in the GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP).

As a founder and co-chair of the OGC Geosemantics Domain Working Group (DWG), Josh has worked effectively to promote the importance of geospatial semantics within the OGC membership as well as throughout the larger Semantic Web Community. As a result of his leadership, this working group has made a significant contribution to the creation of a framework for practical geosemantic applications in the context of OGC Web services and other specifications. Josh also currently co-chairs the Technical Committee REST Subcommittee, and was elected by the membership to serve on the OGC Architecture Board.

On behalf of the of OGC Board of Directors, David Schell, chairman of the Board, said, "Josh Lieberman has been a guiding influence and a brilliant contributor in the consortium. He has consistently exemplified the organization's founding spirit of innovation, strategic vision and personal integrity, and his clear-sighted understanding of the potentials inherent in geospatial semantics provide an example of the excellence to which we as a community aspire."

The Gardels Award is given annually in memory of Kenneth Gardels, a founding director of OGC and OGC's former director of academic programs. Mr. Gardels coined the term "Open GIS," and devoted his life to the humane and democratic uses of geographic information systems. He died in 1999.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 430 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

As used in this document, "Deloitte" means Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries.

18 October 2011 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the Korean Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs (MLTM) will co-host a "2011 OGC Korea Interoperability Day" event on 27 October 2011 in Seoul. (See http://smartkorea2011.or.kr/OGC_Korea_Interoperability_Day.htm.) The event is being held in conjunction with SMART KOREA 2011 (formerly known as NSDI KOREA), and as a complement to the High-level forum on UN-Global Geospatial Information Management being held from 24-26 October in Seoul.

The theme for the 2011 OGC Korea Interoperability Day is "National and Regional Perspective on SDI Policy and Standards." Many countries building spatial data infrastructures have committed to open geospatial standards because use of these standards makes it easier to access, discover, fuse and apply geospatial information and services. Attendees will learn from SDI leaders and share experiences about OGC and ISO standards and related best practices that underpin national and regional SDI policy around the world.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 430 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.

28 September 2011 - The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) and EuroGeographics recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to promote interoperability through open standards to benefit the European geospatial community. The two organizations both seek to promote compatible, standards-based Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) from the local to global level, and the OGC is positioned to help EuroGeographics support a broad range of European stakeholders responding to Europe's INSPIRE Directive.

Both organizations will work cooperatively on outreach and communications to raise the awareness, acceptance, and implementation of open standards and related educational programs and best practices. This will include activities such as participation in international webinars; publishing papers on implementations; documenting Return on Investment; and examination and discussion of legal and policy issues associated with the use of spatial information and associated technologies. The two organizations will also work to identify, plan and convene joint workshops, conference sessions and symposia.

In addition, EuroGeographics and the OGC will seek funding and in-kind resources to advance joint OGC testbeds, pilot projects, and interoperability experiments, with a focus on advancing the European Location Framework.

"As an international standards organization, OGC recognizes the importance of regional requirements for interoperability," said Mark Reichardt, President and CEO of the OGC. "This partnership will help OGC better understand and address the interoperability challenges facing leading mapping, land registry and cadastre organizations across Europe as they work to provide timely, accurate and useful geospatial information in support of a range of local to international challenges."

"With technology driving geographical information into the mainstream, the development of SDIs to underpin services is crucial and this partnership will play an important role in maximising the use and benefits of the authoritative, definitive and high quality data provided by our members,” commented EuroGeographics’ Secretary General and Executive Director, Dave Lovell. “It builds upon a well established and productive relationship between the two organizations, most recently seen in an interoperability experiment built on the ESDIN project’s best practice, which demonstrated that Shibboleth, which is open source software based on open standards, can be used to set up secure geospatial services that comply with the INSPIRE Directive and OGC standards."

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Notes to Editors

EuroGeographics is a not-for-profit organization and the membership association for the European national mapping, land registry and cadastral agencies. It currently brings together 56 members from 44 countries. EuroGeographics‘ members are developing an infrastructure to integrate their national data – including topographic and land information – to deliver the definitive pan-European location framework for a wide range of uses. By sharing best practice and creating standard data specifications and policies, EuroGeographics aims to ensure that members’ individual geographical databases are compatible and can interact with one another. This will provide Europe with the high quality geographical information it needs to develop policies and legislation for the environment, business competitiveness, public services, legal systems, security and more. Visit EuroGeographics‘ website at: http://www.eurogeographics.org and read more about the Shibboleth interoperability experiment here: http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/why-shibboleth.html

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 415 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.